Nine people died, including four policemen, in attacks in and around Baghdad on Tuesday, security and hospital sources said.

Among those killed was a police colonel, while more than a dozen people were hurt in the violence.

According to AFP, two policemen died by an improvised bomb that targeted their patrol overnight south of Baghdad. The third was killed in the town of Fallujah west of the capital by a bomb that attached to his car. Six policemen were wounded in the two attacks, a security source said.

A fourth policeman, Colonel Mustafa Said, was shot dead by gunmen using silencer pistols along the Mohammed al-Qassim highway in the centre of Baghdad, an interior ministry official conveyed.

Bombs in different regions outside Baghdad killed the leader of an anti-Al-Qaeda militia and injured one other person, a security official said.

Two civilian contractors for the Iraqi army, both male cousins, were killed when their home west of Baghdad was targeted by dynamite.

And in the capital's districts of Yarmuk and Dora, two people were killed and two others wounded by "sticky bombs".